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In the Washingtonian, Alexandra Robbins and Ali Eaves explore what would make a woman want to go through pregnancy and childbirth to carry a baby for a couple she just met:

In a dimly lit exam room, a sonographer at the University of Maryland Medical Center’s Center for Advanced Fetal Care points to a bright spot.

“See this right here?” she asks. “This baby’s intestines look a little brighter than the other ones.” The discrepancy could be nothing, she says. It could also be a marker for Down syndrome or cystic fibrosis.

Kathy Powers stares at the screen. Naturally calm and optimistic, she has faith in the results from the amniocentesis, which showed that all three of the babies were healthy. But she’s already worrying about how she’ll relay the news to the babies’ biological mother, whom she’ll call the moment she leaves the appointment.

As the sonographer prints out images of the ultrasound, Powers, a mother of two from Odenton, wipes the warm gel from her stomach and hikes down her shirt. She glances at the quartz bracelet she made three pregnancies ago; a silver bead on it reads believe in miracles. She made an identical bracelet for Kim Crane, the Virginia woman to whom she’ll send the photos.

Powers does believe in miracles. She has believed in them since she conceived her own children with help from fertility treatments, and since seeing Crane’s tears of joy after Powers gave birth to Crane’s son in 2006. “When you share that experience with someone else, it’s the most amazing feeling, to see them holding their own biological child that they could not have on their own. To think I did that!” Powers says. “I knew right away, in the delivery room, that I wanted to do it again.”